The Cenotaph Banquet

Inspector Yashar Tolun is infamous in the precinct for sleeping through his shifts and solving complex cases with minimal effort. But his chronic lethargy shatters when he wakes up inexplicably suspended in a massive nest of human hair, silverware, and hollowed bones, woven into the grand chandelier of Ulaveri's Table - the city’s most exclusive restaurant. Below him lie the grotesque remains of the city's elite. They are victims of a horrifying karmic plague: their necks snapped backward, violently regurgitating their own liquefied organs as compacted pellets. Chef Ulaveri had secretly captured and served the sacred Cenotaph-Owl to his patrons for an astronomical profit, and now the beast's spirit is collecting its toll. To break the curse before it consumes the diners' innocent families, Yashar teams up with Olaris, a melancholic scullery maid who survived the massacre. Accompanied by a soot-feathered owlet, they navigate the supernaturally sealed restaurant. But as Yashar investigates the gruesome aftermath, and Olaris recounts her desperate evasion of the chef in the dark cellars, the truth begins to blur. If Olaris's escape and the owl's slaughter are actually the exact same event, who is Yashar falling in love with?